Barack Obama's rant against technology: Don't shoot the messenger

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16109292

by bensummers • 16 years ago

66 63 16 years ago

andrewtj• 16 years ago

“WITH iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment.”

Anyone got a pointer to the context of this quote? This piece relies heavily on it and it reads to me like it may well be innocuous.

gizmo3• 16 years ago

It's absolutely ripped out of context.

Obama argues that when you're drinking from the information firehose you may lose track of more important things. A completely obvious and very dangerous trend.

Full transcript here: http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-obama-hampton-address-transcri...

mynameishere• 16 years ago

His real problem is that the media is no longer centrally controlled.

And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter.

"Some" of which don't. And "some" of which do, which is the real problem. The fact that he is objecting to "all kinds of arguments" whatever their content might be, is a giveaway.

information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment

Well, if you're old enough to remember when there were 3 channels and 1 local paper, you know that "information", such as it was, was a sedative at best. Sit in front of the TV, believe every sugary bit of crap on the 11 o clock news, go to bed. Nobody, and I mean nobody, was ever "empowered" by the media configuration as it existed through the 20th century. But for a centralized government, it was ideal--very empowering.

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/president-o...

protomyth2• 16 years ago

It is a small part of a larger point, but the speech writer had to know it was a provocative, quotable line. I have some problems with this line that I mentioned in the other thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345882

paulnelligan• 16 years ago

Emmm, Socrates was right

I know I remember things waaaay better when someone TELLS me something, versus when I read it in a book or online.

lidmith• 16 years ago

If I have an interesting conversation with a friend, and we're discussing something, I will remember it pretty well.

If I am listening to a professor read through a lecture, with little to no interaction from the students, I am not as likely to remember it as if I had read it from a book.

eru2• 16 years ago

Yes. I like lectures, by the way, but that's because most professors are smart enough to interact with the audience.

protomyth2• 16 years ago

I have often found that most college lectures have a hard time with distance learning. There normal lecture style translates very badly on a TV screen and people tend to fall asleep in front of a boring TV. The best distance learning teachers I have found come from a community college background. They tend to have to be more interesting to their students and know how to work an audience.

phoboslab• 16 years ago

Not everyone learns in the same way. Some people learn better when they see something, some may want to hear it, some read...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles

pyre3• 16 years ago

> Emmm, Socrates was right

Consider the following statement:

  It's a good thing that the Library of Alexandria
  was destroyed, because now all of that information
  was handed down the *right* way, through oral
  tradition...

pradocchia2• 16 years ago

It's more than that. Writing naturally invests itself with great authority. It tends to override ones own judgement, reason, experience, and sensibilities. This is what Socrates was referring to.

Thus the skilled reader learns to question authority, as a necessary defense.

smutticus• 16 years ago

Not everyone who criticizes technology is a luddite. There are some valid criticisms of technology as a waste of time and a diversion. This article doesn't give enough context to the quote before diving in and passing judgment on Obama.

_delirium• 16 years ago

Yeah, this feels like a subject that needs a few pages, even for a short, journalistic take on the subject, and this article treats it pretty flippantly in half a page, which doesn't add a whole lot to the debate.

(And I even like The Economist; it's the only dead-tree periodical I subscribe to.)

jpdbaugh2• 16 years ago

Exactly. I for one, and probably many others on this site, hate social networking. I really believe it dumbs down human interaction and that the South Park episode on it really summed up the issue. However, I do write code for a living so I am far from a luddite.

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

Social networks are not completely useless - Twitter, Facebook (and here in Brazil, Orkut) are useful tools to find old friends you lost contact with or to start conversations and point to interesting things you find. I get many tips from the hacker news popular feed.

But I really, really don't care for the farms people manage, the hearts people get and so on. I don't need a second job managing a farm.

pyre3• 16 years ago

> Not everyone who criticizes technology is a luddite.

I think that issue is denouncing something, while at the same time admitting that you know nothing about it. It makes you sound as if you are just resistant to change because it's different and new. Granted, the Obama quote is taken out of context, but leaving the quote out of context, this is the issue that people are arguing over. Not necessarily that any criticism of technology makes someone a Luddite.

pwhelan• 16 years ago

I don't know if that is fair though. One doesn't have to know how a microwave works to see how it changed cooking that much.

[EDIT] -- I had another point to go along with this but boss came by and I forgot it. It was a good one though.

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

Why didn't he mention TV when saying "information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment"?

Oh wait, he mentioned all media in the actual, in context quote:

  And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media 
  environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and 
  exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't 
  always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and 
  iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know 
  how to work -- (laughter) -- information becomes a 
  distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather 
  than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of 
  emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on 
  you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our 
  democracy.

Way to go Economist for taking his quote out of context.

yummyfajitas3• 16 years ago

I'm not sure they are taking it out of context. According to your quote, it sounds like he is grumbling about new forms of communication: the "24/7 media environment". That's exactly how the economist described it.

(Note: I only read your quote, not the full speech. Please correct me if the full speech elaborates.)

Also, the economist does observe that he dislikes some low tech media. Not TV, but radio: "...with his grumbling about the crazy theories circulated by the combination of blogs and talk radio."

tptacek3• 16 years ago

"Talk radio" is just a dog-whistle reference to right wing punditry. I'm sure he has no problem listening to the Sox games on the radio.

jbooth5• 16 years ago

The quote is clearly a complaint about the quality/truthfulness of various media sources in an environment where the listener gets total freedom to choose their media.

It's a warning to students that with more information comes more responsibility to be skeptical. This has been a theme of a lot of Obama's speeches and it's clearly something that's important to him as a former professor.

Now you can get all victimized and complain about how he's singling out talk radio for criticism -- but before you do that, I'd like you to wholeheartedly endorse/defend the content of said talk radio hosts. You know, the ones who continually talk about Obama's birth certificate or draw ridiculous blackboard conspiracy theories based on word association between various boogeymen ("liberals", immigrants, black helicopter plans for global government).. Obama's not saying they should be muzzled or have their right to speech taken away, he's saying they're full of shit.

bruceboughton• 16 years ago

I'm not sure this changes the argument The Economist is presenting, which is that Obama is wrong to blame technology for these "pressures".

asdflkj2• 16 years ago

Obama didn't even use the word "technology". How do you go from "gadgets" to "technology"? Actually, if you're The Economist, the same way you write most articles about things whose ideology and political affiliations don't agree with yours.

This is why I particularly dislike The Economist. They are shrewd. Fox News (or, say, The Guardian) poisons the minds of idiots; The Economist poisons my own unless I am extra careful.

pradocchia2• 16 years ago

Agreed. Appropriately enough:

Socrates...feared that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls…they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.”

jbooth5• 16 years ago

Yeah, the Economist is good for foreign reporting and business reporting but since Obama's been elected they've been so clearly biased and/or recycling silly 30-year-old Washington conventional wisdom that I actually didn't renew my subscription.

gizmo3• 16 years ago

I think the problem Obama hints at (but not really explains) is very real. We're the first generation with all the world's information at our fingertips.

We could all be polymaths, we could all get sound understanding of Philosophy, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Politics and so forth... but largely, we don't.

Learning has never been easier, because you can get information in the format you want (audio, video, text, or interactive content) with a click of the mouse. You can pick between course material from dozens of universities and you can read papers written by academics all over the world. And yet, largely, we don't.

We read blog posts that have near zero information content, and the ever present discussion threads where only the least controversial and inane posts rise to the top. But why? Why do we do this, when we know that we'd get much, much more from the internet if we used it to read well written and thoughtful content instead?

Most likely it's just human nature. We're addicted to small bite-sized chunks of non-information. There are a lot of people who can read the internet all day, ever day, only to take breaks by watching TV shows and playing video games. Without ever getting bored. Day, after day, after day.

euroclydon3• 16 years ago

"papers written by academics all over the world" != "well written and thoughtful content"

I think the power of the internet is not access to long boring and often useless or esoteric academic papers, but rather that the internet is the most powerful reference tool ever invented. It's information on demand. Rather than get a sound understanding of Chemistry, I can just look up the occasional chemical compound I am concerned with at the moment. Similarly, I can review individual historic topics at will, and math equations, and search large text volumes for Philosophical gems. Information a-la-cart is power, freedom, and leisure all rolled into one.

jfager2• 16 years ago

There are more well-written and thoughtful academic papers available online than any person will ever make it through in a lifetime. The fact that many (or even most) don't rise to that distinction is irrelevant to the basic point.

It's a rare person who can "look up the occasional chemical compound" to any effective end who hasn't already immersed themselves in the subject of chemistry to know why they are doing so and what the information they're getting back actually means. Information-at-will is unbelievably powerful and amazing, but it's not a substitute for in-depth study.

RyanMcGreal2• 16 years ago

They said exactly the same thing after the printing press created the world's first generation with all the world's information at their fingertips. Somehow we'll manage to survive this onslaught of access to information as well.

9oliYQjP• 16 years ago

While I admit Obama has some points, the discussion is far too complex to address in a presidential speech and I don't think he struck the proper tone. A man with one watch knows the time; a man with two watches is never quite sure. His speech is a failure, because I think it was the effects of having so much information -- as the quote above mentions -- that he wanted to convey rather than the fact that we have this information in the first place. Presidential speeches are all about take-aways, and this was a miserable failure. The take-aways were "Xboxes, iPads, and technology are diversions" which I'm pretty sure was not his intention.

We live in a world where the uneducated and uninformed speak in terms of certainty and absolutes. Liberals have long believed that if only you can debate and reason with your counterparts, you can sway them to your side. Conservatives figured out that this wasn't how human nature worked and I think the Republicans were particularly good throughout the mid 90s and this past decade, at providing a more reassuring world view that is black and white. The more educated we get, the more uncertain we can be about our opinions. I think Obama wanted to point out that the educated might lose control of political power. There is a very real possibility of a reality similar to that of Idiocracy taking hold, and I think Obama wanted to challenge his audience to ward this off. In order to do this, they'll have to learn how to speak to people and be masters of the human psyche. So it's kind of ironic that Obama failed so miserably at delivering his message. I'm sure he's kicking himself because the whole debate is now being framed around "is technology good or bad?".

asnyder• 16 years ago

This happens often in Obama's speeches. If you watch them whole they're insightful, well thought out, and very meaningful. However, both the visual and printed press have no patience to actually deliver the full content, but rather will always take a soundbite, or quote out of context, thus leaving the rest of the speech meaningless. It's unfortunate that the majority of Americans don't actually read or watch the speeches in whole.

Personally, I think this is part of what he was getting at.

euroclydon3• 16 years ago

Yeah, when is Obama going to realize that actions or theatrics will be a much more effective means of communicating his points than long thoughtful speeches? All he had to do, was wait for the opportunity to drop the bomb, preferably in a short sentence that leaves people jaws dropping, that he doesn't spend a bunch of time on games and media diversions, and (gasp!) he thinks they make people stupid.

jbooth5• 16 years ago

It wasn't a speech about technology, it was an offhand comment during a speech to students at Hampton University, which the Economist then chose to center an article around.

The comment itself had a kernel of truth but if you expand it to a 4-graf article then yes it turns out not to do the situation full justice. Stop the presses :)

gizmo3• 16 years ago

It may have been unwise of Obama to give a speech that would lend itself to misinterpretation. Many people mentally shut down the moment they hear something they might disagree with. So to be effective you have to wrap every statement in as much flowery language as you can or you won't get through to people. Even here on HN where most people are intellectually curious and highly educated you still have to pick your words very carefully or you'll get attacked from a dozen different angles about claims you never made and which are not even fundamental to the argument you're making. This mistake we all make time and time again before it truly sinks in that everything you say will be misinterpreted, ripped out of context and used against you.

Now... if only Obama had a blog then he would never have made that remark. The irony indeed.

jamesbritt2• 16 years ago

" We're the first generation with all the world's information at our fingertips."

We're a long way from "all the world's information" being available.

What we have is a seemingly endless stream of information, but it is neither complete nor well-vetted.

You spend considerable time wading through or past useless junk, ideally filter for the good stuff, but perhaps not knowing what's missing or what's really accurate.

jodrellblank• 16 years ago

> Learning has never been easier,

The demotivation of seeing all the things you aren't learning and how vast the scope of things you could be learning has never been easier, either.

istari• 16 years ago

Who else is sick of hearing this message?

Yes, we have unpreceduented access to information. But that just makes clear the real bottleneck to true learning is not lack of information, but lack of INTEREST.

True progress in any field is made by the tiny group of people with burning passion in that field, clustered together and sharing ideas.

Technology exposes us to more fields and connects us to more people than we would have been able to reach. That is its true value. Information by itself is worse than useless.

ZachPruckowski• 16 years ago

I will offer irrefutable proof that Obama is right. Try to visit a site like TvTropes without winding up wasting half your day :-)

eru2• 16 years ago

http://tvtropes.org/

(Lowering the barriers to wasting your time.)

wlievens2• 16 years ago

You should be downvoted for the horrendeous crime you just commited; but instead I upvoted and managed to avoid going to that site. I'm either growing up or growing old.

dan_sim• 16 years ago

I'm relieved to see that the most rated comments are on Obama's side. Even the "arranged" quote from the Economist sounds true to me.

DrSprout• 16 years ago

Obama wasn't ranting against technology. He was making a nuanced argument about our new information society, and being prescriptive about how we should interact with the Internet.

To roughly paraphrase what Obama said, quit dicking around on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. and look for good articles. You also might think about writing some, or even reading a good book. That's not in any way technophobic. He was just doing what any public figure should do at a commencement address, which is tell the graduates to use their education to lead meaningful and productive lives.

RyanMcGreal2• 16 years ago

>To roughly paraphrase what Obama said, quit dicking around on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. and look for good articles.

But sometimes I want to dick around with enjoyable distractions.

misterbwong• 16 years ago

He didn't say never dick around with twitter, etc. In the context of this quote, he's saying that for many people, it's gotten to the point where the dicking around has become a constant distraction from anything more real (or good).

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

I find the fact the writer focused on the wrong thing - the devices being denounced as bad - and miss the message - that important information is drowning in a sea of distracting, enjoyable trivia - telling.

I too worry for this Facebook generation. I would be happier if they spent their time becoming smarter. We will need lots of smart people in the future.

Barack Obama's rant against technology: Don't shoot the messenger

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